The Internet in addition to providing e-mail and easy access to information world-wide has provided an increasingly popular form of communication known as “instant messaging”. Instant messaging allows the exchange of messages with others currently logged onto the Internet. This is similar to the kind of messaging that used to be available to other types of network users, including mainframe computer users and LAN users, but due to the wide-spread use of the Internet, instant messaging on the Internet has a much broader reach than did previously available forms of instant messaging. Understandably, users are becoming attached to the immediacy and value of Internet instant messaging. Unfortunately instant messaging is only available when the user has an Internet connection.
Multi-media wireless telephones have been developed to increase a user's flexibility in accessing the Internet, however these wireless telephones may not work everywhere and have an associated expense in requiring additional equipment. There have also been increasing numbers of public Internet access terminals. However, as yet these are not universally available and have an associated cost per use.
Hence there is a need to provide an alternative form of access to data network instant messaging and particularly to Internet instant messaging.